


WHEN FREEMEN SHALL STAND

by Mikkeneko



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Also a little bit of Justice, Fireworks, Fluff, Gen, Independence, Kissing, M/M, Please don't set Isabela's ship on fire, Post-Game, You kind of need that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4326309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days out to sea after Kirkwall, the ex-Gallows mages decide to celebrate their newfound freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	WHEN FREEMEN SHALL STAND

  
Anders had just managed to get to sleep – exhaustion combining with the lulling rock of the ocean to overcome nerves, nausea and nightmares – when a deafening **BANG** from overhead jerked him wide awake again.

He tumbled out of the hammock to fall on his face on the damp, salty floorboards (although to be fair, he probably would have fallen on his face in any case) and picked himself back up, leaning heavily on the flimsy cabin walls.

They were three days out to sea from Kirkwall and all the disasters there; Anders had been exhausted, both physically and mentally, first from the fighting and then the strain of trying to herd the freed Gallows mages onto the ships. They were willing to cooperate (most of them,) but most of them had never been outside of a Circle in their adult lives and simply had no idea how to do things on their own. It made his heart ache – and Justice snarl within him – to see the way that they simply sat quiet and still when not given orders or instructions, as though still fearful of drawing attention to themselves by acting out of turn.

Tonight had been the first night Anders had slept since the battle, but another explosion rattled the boards over his head, and if they were under attack from a Chantry galleon he needed to get his staff up on deck posthaste.

Anders stumbled up the stairs – more ladder than stairway, really, and a challenge to anyone trying to get down it in the dark without breaking some bones – with his staff in hand, ready to unleash some elemental destruction –

And stopped, staring.

The ship was calm in the falling dusk, sails furled tight and lines coiled; every mage they had taken with them from the Gallows was crowded onto the foredeck, staffs pointed up in the air, and shooting off fireworks.

Explosions of brilliant light burst in the night air over the ship, and they were different in form and color from one mage to the next. The youngest apprentices sent up simple, enthusiastic flares of light that flashed white and went out in an instant with an almighty BANG, the source of the noise that had woken Anders. The older mages had more finesse; their fireworks went up in all colors of red, gold, blue and green, rising up trailing comet-tails of golden light and exploding into thick showers of sparks. Some went up straight as an arrow, bursting high overhead; others rose in wriggling spirals and unfolded into intricate curls, the sparks staying lit for long seconds as they drifted back down onto the water.

And sometimes not into the water. One apprentice’s firecracker burst too early, showering hot sparks and cinders back on the deck; a small hard rock pelted off Anders’ forehead, leaving a small bleeding cut, and another coal tumbled into a pile of loose sheeting and began to send up smoke. “Hey, watch it!” Isabela’s voice floated back towards them from the forecastle. “Don’t you set fire to my ship! Do you want to end up on the ocean floor?”

Anders quenched the cinder with a quick Winter’s Grasp, then hurried forward. “What in the name of the Void are you lot _doing?_ ” he demanded. “Are you trying to bring every Chantry galleon on the Waking Sea down on us?”

The crowd of mages stopped in their tracks and turned to look at him, guilty looks on every face. Near the back of the crowd, one apprentice let off one final defiant _pop._

“Ha!” Hawke cackled, from his position lounging on a stack of tarp-covered crates on the mid-deck. He actually had somehow acquired a sausage on a stick, which he used like a conductor’s baton to follow the path of the firecracker in the sky. “With this many mages packed on board? I’d like to see them try it. They’d never even get in range for a smite before their hull got burned out under them.”

“So your plan is to burn our ship out from under us, instead?” Anders exclaimed.

“Oh, it’s perfectly safe,” Merrill exclaimed, sliding down the mast from the crow’s-nest. Her hands were full of long sticks that burned bright colors at the end, spitting off a stream of harmless sparks. “I mean, Isabela said it was okay, and it’s her ship. Were you sleeping? Did we wake you? Sorry about that. We didn’t mean it, but the weather was so nice and the sky was so clear…”

“Yes, but _why?”_  Anders wanted to know, turning back to the crowd of mages. “Whatever possessed you?”

“Said the expert in possession,” Hawke murmured, and then “ow!” when Merrill’s bare foot connected with his ribs.

The Gallows mages looked at each other, and apparently one older gentleman was elected spokesperson by default. “Er… well… it’s Summerday, you see,” he explained. “The Knight-Commander always had us do fireworks displays on the Summerday… above the Gallows, you see, so they could be seen in Hightown…”

For a moment, Anders resisted the urge to pull his hair out in despair. What was the point of trying to free the mages if all they knew, if all they could do was continue on the same actions they had known in slavery? “But you’re not _in_  the Gallows any longer,” he exclaimed. “You don’t have to be… performing circus animals for Meredith any more. You don’t have to demean yourself, putting on shows for _anyone._  Not ever again!”

Another one of those nervous exchange of glances, and then another mage stepped forward – this one a middle-aged, graying woman. “But that’s _why,_  don’t you see?” she asked.

“No,” Anders shook his head. “I _don’t_ see.”

“It’s _because_  nobody is making us,” she said, as though that explained everything. “We’re not doing it for Meredith, or the Kirkwall nobles, or for anyone else but ourselves. We’re doing it because _we_  want to… and because we _can_.”

“…Oh.” Anders felt the wind go out of his sails, leaving him suddenly as becalmed as the ship itself. Another roll of the deck under his feet took his balance, and he found himself on the deck suddenly, sitting back on his haunches. _“Oh.”_

He was just tired, that was all. He hadn’t eaten a proper meal since he came on the ship, too seasick to keep anything down, so his blood sugar was low. That was the only reason why he found himself fighting back tears, the ship and the sea and the sky and the people all crowding into a colorful blur in his eyes.

“C'mere,” Hawke said, and nudged him over to the side until he was leaning back against the same tarp-covered boxes Hawke had been using as a perch, sliding a casual hand behind his back. Merrill sat down on his other side and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tight.

“Well, go on,” Isabela called from the back of the ship. “Let’s have some more fireworks! Can you do the ones that explode, and then explode again? Those are my favorite.”

That was all the encouragement the Gallows mages needed; with a whoop and a clamor they began setting off fireworks again, their enthusiasm doubled. The hull of the ship was lit in flashes, bright as day for an instant before the sparks faded again. Colored smoke hung in clouds in the air over the ship, reflecting and amplifying the light and color back against itself.

Anders felt something stirring within him, a feeling of restlessness and expectation that both was and wasn’t his own. “Justice wants to celebrate, too,” he realized out loud.

“I’d like to see that,” Merrill said. “Go on, then!”

He hesitated for a moment, trying to work out what was right – then his left hand lifted, of its own volition, crackling with blue-white flames. Disdaining the staff beside him, the magic leapt from his bare hands to spear straight up into the sky – a column of pure cerulean light that rose and rose for half a mile before it finally petered out in a shower of sparks. On the foredeck, the mages cheered, and changed their own colors to match; a riot of blue-white flames bloomed and faded in the dark sky as if to challenge the stars themselves.

Anders didn’t know how long he’d been channeling the spell before a tug on his shoulder brought him back to himself; he let himself be pulled around until he was face to face with Hawke, then his eyes fluttered shut as Hawke’s lips pressed against his own. The veilfire sputtered out as Anders dropped his hands to grip Hawke’s shoulders, holding tight in an effort to disguise the trembling in his hands.

The kiss lingered, there in the semi-twilight lit by dancing fire, cracks and booms rolling and echoing back from the open sea. At last they broke apart, Anders’ eyes fluttering open to take in Hawke’s face; the rueful half-smile on those lips, the blue-white reflections glistening in his eyes.

“D'you,” Hawke said, and then had to clear his throat, gesturing. “D'you want one of these sausages-on-a-stick? I can get another for you, if you like.”

That was just too much; Anders cracked up laughing, collapsing half on the deck and half on Hawke’s lap. Merrill joined in, and then Hawke; and their laughter mixed with the sound of the explosions, rolling free for miles over the dark sea.

* * *

 

~end.

**Author's Note:**

> This was hastily written for July 4th, and now it's here. Because I'm an American and that means that fireworks equal FREEDOM.
> 
> The title comes from the fourth verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, aka "the part of the song that literally nobody knows."
> 
> Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand  
> Between war's desolation and their loved land!  
> Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,  
> And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”  
> No refuge could save the hireling and slave  
> From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:  
> And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave  
> O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


End file.
